Updated: June 24, 2026
This week marks the twentieth anniversary of Dedoimedo, a place to learn a lot about a lot. What a journey. When I created my site back in 2006, I didn't quite know how it will go, and whether it would become what it has become. But I had hunger for knowledge, Web and Linux in particular, and I decided to join the crowd of hopeful nerds, riding the waves of the growing global phenomenon called the Internet.
Looking back, it was a fantastic decision. As we embark on the next two decades of grumpiness, technological education and sharp humor, I would like to take you down the good ole memory lane, and share my thoughts and impressions of what has happened since. I mean, you've all been there, but a fresh perspective won't hurt. Or to be more precise, a not-so-fresh perspective. Let us reminisce. Or something.
A humble start
For the first two years of its existence, Dedoimedo had a simple page. I would update the site once every two weeks or so. Early traffic numbers showed about 300 page views per day. As time went by, and I gained more insight and experience with operating systems and tools, I realized I needed to give my site a bit more pizzazz. The two pieces that made the big difference were my GRUB Legacy and GRUB 2.0 tutorials. Within days, the articles leapt to the top of the search indexes, and pretty much stayed there since.
I started doing more thorough Linux distro reviews, and expanded my work from virtual machines to actual hardware, with this or that laptop. My tests would reflect real-life usage, with actual problems, and no sweet talking over the issues. In parallel, I became even more "obsessed" with Linux. At this time, I was still working as a physicist, but I had decided to make Linux my career.
I attended a Linux system administration course, I even completed an LPIC-1 certification. And then, I found a job as the operating system "person", tasked with maintaining and optimizing a high-performance compute estate for a major chip design company. If you think system administration, think again. My work involved anything from configuration management to kernel debugging and everything in between, and then, things got even more elaborate and grand and fun. I went from doing physics to babysitting 5,000 servers overnight (and eventually, ten times as many). There was no warmup. It was the quantum leap to the big leap, right away.
At the exact same time, I gave Dedoimedo a visual makeover (but still pure HTML/CSS), and began publishing articles 3-4 times a week, all 100% original content. virtually instantly, my traffic went from 300 to about 3,000 page views per day. Side by side with my career, my site flourished, and vice versa. Over the next couple of years, Dedoimedo would hit the million monthly views milestone. Not bad, Dedo, not bad.
Door opener
The decision to create my site was the best career booster I could have had. Every job interview I went to, people would zone in on dedoimedo.com, asking questions. Despite its somewhat controversial nature, the honesty and the meticulousness in my writing made my page stand out, made me stand out. And quite consistently, almost every single tutorial or guide I would write, it would find its way to the top of the search indices.
For some people, the Linux distro reviews would be the clincher. For others, it would be the gdb piece - that one got me invited to a conference. Lots of people hold my Linux maps in high regard. Over the years, I have received multiple job offers and book writing offers by email, without me doing anything. Dedoimedo was doing its own hard work for me, so to speak. Best of all, I've also received hundreds of emails of appreciation. People would thank me for influencing and shaping their careers. They would thank me for getting them started in Linux, for finding a good, happy path in their work. And at every single place I worked at, there would always be at least one person who would express the same emotions in person, and tell me the reason they started working in IT was because of my site. It's this energy that eclipses all the usual negativity. P.S. As a somewhat funny anecdote, I can tell you people started complaining about Dedoimedo not having comments already back in 2007 or so. It's a point of contention that keeps on giving.
But the Internet has changed ...
The first warning sign that things aren't all a-okay was in 2011. At that time, Google introduced some search algorithm change, I think Panda, and my Web traffic went down 50% that year, as queries were directed toward flashier sites blatantly scraping my content (or even just referencing it). Eventually, Google dropped the change, but only briefly, before they implemented the mobile-first, social-first policy. The rise of the touch phone ushered a new era, a worse era in pretty much every regard. It was then that I felt the Internet would never quite be the same again, even if it took a few years before things became really bad. For that matter, early on, you could even make some reasonable money with ads, enough to support site operations. But that cake also got smaller and less tasty, and eventually, I dropped the ads altogether. I decided I didn't want to partake in the race to the bottom.
Microsoft also decided to make things pointless with their Metro nonsense in Windows 8. My oh my. That was the first of many attempts to ruin the desktop. Today, we enjoy the culmination of these efforts, from TPM to Secure Boot to online accounts to subscriptions to upcoming "developer verification" in Android and many other joys of Dystopia. But let's not spoil a happy moment. As awful as the modern Web is, don't worry, it will get worse, so much worse. Throughout all these idiotic waves of hype, I stayed true to my own mission: making good, fun content.
Alas, the world didn't want to have fun, Linux included. My favorite operating system peaked with the release of Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr. Then, Canonical got disillusioned with convergence, failed to change the world with its rather remarkable phone idea, and as a result, it killed Unity and embraced Gnome. Ever since, the Linux desktop has remained stagnant, with only the KDE team making some positive changes, but with lots of misguided decisions, too.
You are here
This sort of brings us to the present day. If I look at 2006, the landscape seems almost unrecognizable. I am not naive. The operating systems back then were just as buggy and silly, and in many regards, even more so than what we have today. But the Internet was wild and fresh and full of hope and not everything had to be flavored with AI and social turd sparklings.
Am I still curious? Do I still "like" Linux? Do I feel that deep drive of curiosity that made the younger me grab for Knoppix or SUSE or Mandriva CDs, and test these fine distros? And if not Linux, what else is there to test and explore and try that isn't just mindless AI or only-for-developers-dark-themed something? These aren't trivial questions, mind. But answer them, I will.
One, it's hard to be easily impressed by technology after what I've done in my career. From books to awards to patents to conferences to significant editorial work, optimizing a global high performance computing grid with roughly 50,000 servers, and writing about 3,000 articles on pretty much any topic possible, the list of what's left is quite short. Let me rephrase, the list of what's left and can be considered interesting is quite short. Also, after all, naturally, my tolerance for nonsense has gone down. For example, how many more distros do I need to test to feel disappointed about the outcome? How many times should I feel anger that we still need to suffer the MBA turdonics of the big tech because smaller, open-source projects simply fail to seize the opportunity?
Two, I am still very curious, and I feel great, almost childish joy when I discover new things. High-quality things, that is. The best example I have is the Upscayl local AI image enhancer. It was such a breath of fresh air. But side by side with my natural desire to explore and learn, I am deeply cognizant of the world that surrounds us. Bots and crap and supply chain attacks. Testing new software has become roulette, except you use a semi-automatic, not a revolver. This environment makes me leery of taking on projects, because I'm not in the mood to battle security before I can even begin an honest review. Perhaps the status quo is intentional, and the goal is to disillusion people from FOSS and steer them toward low-IQ smartphone stores, to make the domination complete and final. Perhaps. But whatever the underlying mechanisms, they make the world of software far less enticing than it used to be. There are two parallel Internets. The big commercial one, full of ads and nonsense, and the smaller, dwindling "old" Web, of which I'm proudly part of.
Three, if you think I'm giving up, you're wrong. I will happily write and rant for another 50-60 years, however long it takes to entropize me. It is at this lovely twenty-year milestone that I want to reaffirm my staunch commitment to grumpiness and honest detail. As always.
Conclusion
If you ask me, if we somehow could, I would gladly go back to the early 2010s. At least computers-wise. We had everything we have today. HD content, check. Streaming, check. Navigation, offline and online, check. You could use voice to text and vice versa, you could drive cars with real buttons and handbrake, you could do your software stuff on a desktop, a tablet or a phone, take your pick. Everything was there, minus the pervasive social crappola and so-called AI. Old man yells at the clouds? Nah. Intelligent man is not willing to bend over.
The world forever changes. But one great privilege of having a website for twenty years is that it serves as an excellent time machine for one's own thoughts and ideas. I can always go back to my early articles and see what I was thinking back then, how I reasoned technology of the day. If you read my article on what Linux needs to gain market share, written in 2009, you will see that my curmudgeonly brain worked well even in its younger, more naive form. So yes, I observe the change, I judge the change, but I don't let it blindly influence me. Dedoimedo grew and morphed and evolved, and with it, so did I, but I believe I've never lost the drive and the mission that propelled me to create this site in the first place: to create best content, no matter what the topic may be.
Enough melancholy. Enough whining. Enough pining. You got what you needed. Nostalgia. Snark. Some light factoids. So what now? Well, how about you show some love and support, you grumpy old dinosaurs! Shower me with gifts and praise. Go buy my books as an anniversary treat! Do something positive! Be like me, all sunshine and rainbows! And that's enough for today. Happy twentieth birthday, Dedoimedo. Party on.
Cheers.